One More Drink
by byebyebirdie58
Summary: One drink to remember them, one to forget. One drink for every damn tear you've shed, and one for every guy you've ever missed. And boy, do you miss them like hell. Oneshot following chapter two of Intervention.


_Neon shines through smoky eyes tonight,_

_It's 2 am - I'm drunk again, it's heavy on my mind._

_Excuse me, please one more drink,_

_Could you make it strong 'cause I don't need to think._

That image mocked him. It stared and pointed back at him the whole time screaming the words "failure". He couldn't do it and he knew it. He couldn't even make it two damn weeks without needing one drink. Was he really so pathetic that he couldn't go two weeks without needing one drink?

_It could be worse buddy. Much worse than this._

It could, but he wouldn't agree with it; he simply refused to. He was bad off and that was that. One drink had multiplied to two; from two it went to three, until four empty bottles sat in front of him and that numbness began to come over him. He laughed quietly, wondering if he was drunk. What did he care? He'd needed that drink more than anything. The others … he couldn't help them.

The numbness was different than what he'd felt before. No better, no worse; cold and unfeeling, yet still different. He shuddered as one familiar feeling did come over him. It was an undefined feeling, bordering too many others to count. But it was there and completely un-new. He'd felt it so many times before that he'd at one point learned to ignore it. …But that had been a long, long time ago. Or so it felt. He'd learned to ignore it at different points in his life when it was most convenient to do so. When she'd left them, when they'd died, after Vietnam. He'd forgotten it enough to forget it completely and yet here it was coming back as if he'd never tried to shut it out at all. It was a feeling that bordered too many others, yet carried it's own.

When she'd left, that'd been the first time he'd learned to close it off. She'd never really loved them, but the old man had been crazy about her. She slept around a lot; most of their neighborhood was aware of that.

"Oh, that Loraine Randle's out again. Probably drunk, too." they'd all say.

She'd never loved them, but he'd loved her even if it was just a little. She taught him how to cry and how to forget. He liked to think he didn't cry past the age of fourteen, but from then on, every beer bottle was like a tear he'd shed. It was his way of showing he had some emotion left. And she was why he was drinking tonight.

When they'd died, he'd felt nothing for a while. He tired to hide his emotions until one day they came out. And why should he have kept them away for so long? After all, that's how Dally had snapped in the first place. But it was funny … he didn't blame the kid for what had happened. Dally was bound to snap, wasn't he? And maybe Johnny was just better off. That saying "better dead than red". Well, he supposed red meant blood, in that case ….

When he finally did show some sort of emotion, it was anger. Anger at one of his friends for mourning in his own way; and he guessed he also had right to be sad over some knife. After all, it had been the guy's pride and joy …. At least he'd been showing emotion. Maybe that had made his friend stronger than him. Able to show something other than bitterness and anger. And that's why he was drinking tonight.

When he was in Vietnam he'd lived in utter fear. He'd never been afraid of much in his life, but how could he not have been afraid then? Crouching low in bushes, looking back over your shoulder every moment. That intense paranoia still followed him sometimes. But it was the worst at those points when he really did think he was safe.

He'd told them he'd be back; walked away for a minute to take a leak and when he came back, three out of the four men were wounded. Hell, who was he kidding? They were fucking dead. Zimmerman had cried that night. He'd been in country not eight weeks and he had a wound to the leg. He'd come to the country a boy of eighteen and left a man of too many years to count. And Zimmerman was why he was drinking tonight.

Oh, sure, he could go on, but even he knew that it was just hurting him. He could remember his friend finding him OD'ed on the bathroom floor at Buck's. He could remember finding out his father had left every last penny he owned to him and he could remember the time he'd offered the kid a reefer and when Darry found out …. But he wouldn't. He'd take another drink and forget. He couldn't forget the memory, but he could numb the pain and that's just what he'd do.

He'd numb the pain of things that probably were better left unsaid and he'd numb them in the only way he knew how to.

"Here's to y'all." He raised the last beer bottle in their names and remembered those times. He hated them and he missed them. Which ones he hated and which he missed, he wasn't sure. That was where that emotion crossed too many boarders. It left undefined blurs of hate and love and so much more. He wasn't sure what to feel, but he knew why he was drinking tonight.

_One more drink and I'll move on  
One more drink and I'll be gone_


End file.
